Some THATCamper stats

Posted on by in Administrative, Proceedings of THATCamp, Your Categories Are Inadequate

Just thought I’d share a few factoids about the people who are coming to THATCamp CHNM 2012. Executive summary: our THATCamp has a slightly higher proportion of women (41%) than THATCamps overall (35%), a much lower proportion of people who’ve never been to a THATCamp (49%) than THATCamps overall (80%), and a somewhat higher proportion of academics at all ranks (though I do think the numbers from the text string fields are iffy). See for yourself:

THATCAMP CHNM

Gender (N=146)
Women: 60 (41%)
Men: 86 (59%)
(numbers taken from folks’ selection of a t-shirt size)

Newb vs. non-newb (N=142)
Has never been to a THATCamp: 70 (49%)
Has been to a THATCamp once before: 26 (18%)
Has been to more than one THATCamp: 46 (33%)

Title (N=158)
Some kind of professor (*Prof*): 28 (18%)
Some kind of grad student (*Grad*” or *Doctoral* or *PhD*): 32 (20%)
Some kind of librarian (*Libr*): 7 (5%)
Other: 91 (58%)
(text strings always a bit sketchy to count, of course)

Organization (N=158)
From a university or college (*Univ* or *College*): 79 (50%)
Other: 79 (50%)
From GMU and/or CHNM (*Mason* or *GMU* or *Center for History* or *CHNM*): 31 (20%)
(same caveat about counting text strings; there’s probably quite a few more people who’re affiliated with higher ed)

We’ve got the same data for some (between 20% and 60%, depending on the field) of the 3200+ users on thatcamp.org, so we can put it in a larger context.

ALL THATCAMPS

Gender (N=1847)
Women: 642 (35%)
Men: 1205 (65%)

Newb vs. non-newb (N=624)
Has never been to a THATCamp: 501 (80%)
Has been to a THATCamp once before: 64 (10%)
Has been to more than one THATCamp: 59 (10%)

Title (N=1469)
Some kind of professor (*Prof*): 317 (22%)
Some kind of grad student (*Grad*” or *Doctoral* or *PhD*: 368 (25%)
Some kind of librarian (*Libr*): 161 (11%)
Other: 623 (42%)

Organization (N=1321)
From a university or college (*Univ* or *College*): 517 (39%)
Other: 804 (61%)
(same caveat about the higher ed contingent likely being larger: some people probably put the name of their research institute or unit instead of the name of their university or college)

Shoulda asked “awesomeness quotient.” I bet we’d have scored pretty high relative to other THATCamps there. 🙂

About Amanda French

(Please ask any THATCamp questions on the THATCamp forums at http://thatcamp.org/forums -- I'm no longer THATCamp Coordinator.) I am now a member of the THATCamp Council, and I am the former THATCamp Coordinator and Research Assistant Professor at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, in which capacity I provided support for THATCamp organizers and participants, maintained http://thatcamp.org, traveled to some (not all!) THATCamps, and directed large-scale projects such as the Proceedings of THATCamp. Before that, I worked with the NYU Archives and Public History program on an NHPRC-funded project to create a model digital curriculum for historian-archivists. I held the Council on Library and Information Resources Postdoctoral Fellowship at NCSU Libraries from 2004 to 2006, and afterward taught graduate and undergraduate courses at NCSU in Victorian literature and poetry as well as in the digital humanities and in advanced academic research methods. At the University of Virginia, while earning my doctorate in English, I encoded texts in first SGML and then XML for the Rossetti Archive and the Electronic Text Center. My 2004 dissertation was a history of the villanelle, the poetic form of Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night" and Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art."